Chapter 1Between the Wars

THE
old Australian Imperial Force lived on in two fields. On the one hand were the
returned soldiers' organisations, which set out to maintain
the comradeship established on the now-distant battlefields, to obtain
generous treatment for soldiers and to care for their dependants. On
the other was the citizen army which, in 1921, was remodelled so that, in
framework, it reproduced the A.I.F. as it had been from 1916 onwards.
Most of the men of the A.I.F. said good-bye to the army without regret, but
there were enough ardent spirits to provide a strong cadre of officers for
the re-formed citizen force, some of them because they liked the life of
the camp and the mess, and some out of a conviction that the army they
trained or its successor would be called upon again.

A similar impulse towards public service, generally inspired by the
fellowship of the A.I.F. and a resolve to make a new and better world,
led a noticeable number of returned soldiers into politics, and at the
elections in 1919 a small group of all ranks was elected to the Federal
Parliament. It is doubtful whether many of these would have entered
politics had it not been for the incentive which their army experience had
produced and the prestige the quality of their service had given them.
Unfortunately, nearly every soldier was on the same side of the new House--in Mr Hughes1
Nationalist party2--and only one in the "rump" Labour
party which had fought with success against conscription for overseas
service in 1916 and 1917.

It is not the task of the writer of this volume to trace even briefly
the political and economic struggles of the Australian people during the
period between the wars, but some knowledge of the attitude of
parliaments and people towards military problems is necessary to an
understanding of the world into which the Second A.I.F. was born. In
1919 the Government was dominated by W. M. Hughes, the wartime
Prime Minister, and Mr Pearce3 who for four years had been his Minister
for Defence. Among new members of the right-wing parties who showed
promise of rising to some eminence were Mr Bruce,4 a business man who
had served at Gallipoli and in France as an infantry officer in the British
Army-he had been in England when war broke out-and Dr Earle
Page,5 a vigorous leader of the rising Country party. These men and the

--1--

others of their parties, and particularly the contingent of former members
of the A.I.F. now in Parliament, held with tense fervour the belief that
Australia must maintain her links with Britain unbroken; and most of
them that the Australian defence forces should be maintained at least at
sufficient strength to preserve an efficient nucleus, and should be inter locked
with those of the Empire as a whole. At the same time, like nearly
all Australians of the period, they considered their country to be heavily
burdened by expenditure on development and its oversea debts, and that
the Australian should not be asked to spend as much upon defence as
should the citizen of the United Kingdom.

The Labour party, on the other hand, had been reshaped during the
war by two historic struggles which overshadowed any other conflicts
the Labour movement had experienced excepting only the great strikes
of 1890-94. These were the successful campaigns against conscription for
overseas service and the strikes of 1917. The expulsion from the party of
those members who supported conscription for foreign service had left in
it a hard core of uncompromising Labour leaders in whose eyes the vital
struggle of their period was that between employers and workers, and the
war just ended merely a conflict between two "capitalist" groups. To
some of them a khaki tunic was a symbol of "imperialism." Were not
British soldiers in 1920 being employed against the newly-born socialist
republic of Russia, against the nationalists of India and, closer still, against
Irish patriots? About one-third of the Labour members were of Irish
birth or descended from Irish settlers and, during the war, the hearts of a
considerable number had been wrung by the bitter fight in Ireland which
culminated in the rising of 1916.

Both groups, however, wished to find a way of preventing war, and
many believed that another world war could be avoided. Although fought
far from home, the war had caused Australia a loss that some considered
irreparable: 59,000 of the pick of her young men, all volunteers. The
conviction, born of nineteenth century optimism and philanthropy, that
mankind was steadily making progress towards a kinder, happier way of
life was shared without question by politicians and writers of both the
Right and the Left. Might not a League of Nations preside over a
peaceable and increasingly prosperous world in which such losses would
not occur? That was not merely desirable, it was argued, but necessary,
because another world war would mean the destruction of civilisation.
Even to maintain armed Services on the scale of 1914 would be burden some
to the peoples of Europe whose energies were needed to rebuild
shattered towns and restock empty storehouses. And it was laid down
in Article VIII of the Covenant of the League of Nations:

1. The members of the League recognise that the maintenance of peace requires
the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national
safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations.

In 1920-21, the first year after demobilisation, the Hughes Government
reduced the navy to a strength of about 4,500, 1,000 more than in 1914,
but with twenty more vessels than it possessed in that year. The militia

--2--

numbered 100,000 compulsorily enlisted men of the 1899, 1900 and
1901 classes, practically untrained, and was equipped with the weapons
which the A.I.F. had brought home. Under the Defence Act these men
could be obliged to fight only within Australia. There was a cadre of 3,150
permanent officers and men, which was about 150 more than in 1914.
Hughes pointed out that such forces would cost each Australian 12s 4d
for the army and 12s 6d for the navy, compared with £2 13s 9d and £1 16s 3d in the United Kingdom.6

In the defence debates which followed these reductions by the Hughes
Government some Labour members advocated going farther and entirely
abolishing the army and navy; others argued that the Australian did not
need to begin his military training until war began; "if the war proved
anything," said Mr D. C. McGrath (Labour) "it proved that young
Australians many of whom had not previously known one end of a rifle
from another were, after training for a month or two, equal to if not
superior to any other troops".7 It was necessary for General Ryrie,8 the
Assistant Minister for Defence, who was among the few on his side who
believed war to be possible within a generation, solemnly to argue the
need for military training and the necessity for maintaining a cadre of
skilled officers and men. "Germany", this veteran soldier said, "is only
watching and waiting for the day when she can revenge herself".9 Some
Government members advocated spending the money sought for the three
Services on immigration and the unification of the railways, as forms of
defence.

The Ministers who brought forward the modest defence plans of 1920
and 1921 were described by some Labour members as "militarists",
and "war mongers". "We must carefully guard", said the newly-elected
Mr Makin1. (Labour) "against the spreading in the body politic of the
malignant cancer of militarism."2 Mr Frank Brennan3 (Labour) described
the Minister for Defence, Mr Pearce, as "the faithful servant of the
military caste he represents"4; and Mr A. Blakeley (Labour) denounced
Hughes' Ministry as a "brass hat Government".5 Equally strongly worded
advice that expenditure on defence be reduced came from more conservative
quarters. For example, a Royal Commission (Sir Robert Gibson
and Messrs George H. Turton and G. G. Haldane) appointed in 1921 to
consider and report on Commonwealth public expenditure (the "Federal
Economy Commission") wrote: "Evidence is not lacking that there is a
desire in some quarters to maintain the Military spirit and permanently

--3--

saddle the country with an expenditure on defence which would be
exceedingly onerous." Sir Robert Gibson was a director of manufacturing
companies and later chairman of the Commonwealth Bank Board; Mr
Turton was general manager for Australasia of the Royal Insurance
Company, and Mr Haldane chief accountant in the Postmaster-General's
Department.

While these debates were in progress at home, Mr Hughes went abroad
to the Imperial Conference of June 1921 where he pleaded eloquently
for a renewal of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, provided that there was a
safeguard "against even the suspicion of hostility or unfriendliness to the
United States", and for a conference with the United States, Japan and
France on the limitation of armaments.6 In August the United States issued
invitations to the British Empire, Japan, France and Italy to attend a disarmament conference at Washington, where, in December, the representatives
of those countries agreed to reduce the number of their battleships
and to restrict the size of new vessels. Ultimately the United States and
the British Empire would each maintain capital ship's aggregating 525,000
tons, Japan 315,000 tons, and France and Italy each 175,000 tons.7 The
treaty would remain in force until December 1936. At the same time the
United States and the British Empire gave Japan an agreement which
meant in effect that Britain would not create new fortifications in Asia
east of Singapore, nor the United States in the central Pacific west of the
Hawaiian Islands. In return Japan agreed not to fortify the Kuriles in the
north, or the islands south of the Japanese mainland.

From an Australian point of view this was epochal. For 130 years the
Australian continent, southern lobe of Asia, had been peacefully peopled
by Englishmen and a moderate stream of other Europeans. This movement
had been conducted behind the shield of British naval supremacy. But at
Washington the British nations, exhausted by a global war, granted that
they could no longer command the seven seas. The United States succeeded
to the command of the western Atlantic and eastern Pacific, Japan to the
command of the western Pacific. However, in the happy glow of internationalism
that followed the war, the treaty was seen as a step towards
the widespread disarmament that was to lead to a return to the relative
peace of the nineteenth century.

While the Washington Conference was still in session Hughes had
promised Parliament that, if the naval reductions were agreed upon, the
defence vote would be substantially reduced. Consequently, in the following
year, nearly half of the ships of the Australian Navy were put out of
commission, and it was decided to reduce the permanent staff of the army
to 1,600, to maintain the seven militia divisions (five of infantry and two
of cavalry) at a strength of about 31,000 men--only 25 per cent of their
war strength--and to reduce training to six days in camp and four days

--4--

at the local centres a year. Seventy-two regular officers8 out of a meagre
total of some 300 would be retired, and compensated at a cost of £300,000.

In the army the sharp edge of this axe was felt most keenly by two
relatively small groups. In the flush of nationalism which had followed
federation there had been energetic competition to enter the military
college at Duntroon, which was opened in 1911. Careful selection,
thorough technical training and moulding of character by picked instructors
from Great Britain, followed immediately by active service, had produced
an officer corps which, though small, was of fine quality. Before and
during the war of 1914-18 each young officer saw a brilliant career ahead
of him, if he survived. The reductions of 1922 dashed these hopes. The
young Duntroon graduates who had been majors in the A.I.F. were now
peace-time captains and lieutenants at the bottom of a list so long and
in a corps so small that it was unlikely that there would be any promotion
for most of them for ten years at least.9 Until then they would wear the
badges of rank and use the titles attained on active service, but would be
paid as subalterns and fill appointments far junior to those that many of
them had held for the last two or three years in France or Palestine.
Even more rigorous had been the reduction in rank of the warrant
officers, some of whom had become lieut-colonels and commanded
battalions in the war. They were debarred from appointment to the officer
corps--the Staff Corps it was now named--entry to which was reserved to
pre-war regular officers and graduates of Duntroon, and became, at the
best, quartermasters, wearing without the corresponding pay and without
hope of promotion the rank that they had won in the war. The result
was that the community obtained its cadre of permanent officers and
N.C.O's for the new army at bargain prices.1

Such reductions could be logically based only on an assumption either
that the possibility of war was remote, or that, if it occurred, Britain could
be relied upon to defend Australia. But the British Services too were
drastically cut by political leaders who believed that the people demanded
it; army expenditure fell from £80,000,000 in 1921-22 to £52,000,000
in 1923-24, naval expenditure from £95,000,000 to £43,000,000, air
force from £13,000,000 to £9,000,000. Lieut-General Sir Harry
Chauvel,2 the Australian Inspector-General, in his first annual report after
the retrenchments-one of a series of wise and penetrating examinations
of Australian military problems of which, however, little notice was taken--sought
reasons for Australian "complacency". He decided that it was

--5--

based on geographical isolation (which he declared to be a source of
danger, not security); on a sublime faith in the power of the British Navy
(though Australia had no docks to enable that navy to operate in her
waters); on an impression that the Australian youth could be transformed
into an efficient soldier in a few weeks (though there were six months
of training before the A.I.F. went into action in 1914-15); that the
300,000 men of the A.I.F. were still available (though only 140,000 were
discharged fit and one-fifth of that force had been over 31 on enlistment,
six to nine years before); that the war of 1914-18 was a "war to end
wars".

The belief that the war of 1914-18 had ended war was rudely
shaken, however, in the spring of 1922 when, on 19th September, Mr
Hughes announced in the House that the British Cabinet had decided "to
resist Turkish aggression and prevent the Allies being driven out of
Constantinople", and had asked whether Australia would send a contingent if necessary.
Hughes (although he resented the impetuousness of
this appeal) promptly announced that the Australian Cabinet had agreed
to comply. The tone of the debate which followed his announcement was
both sober and prophetic; hardly an echo was heard of the outbursts
against "war mongers" and "the military caste" which had occurred in
the defence debates a few months before. Mr Charlton,3 the Leader of
the Opposition (Labour), asked for fuller information. "Did Lloyd George
appeal to the League of Nations?" he asked. "No, he sent cables to the
Dominions asking them to participate in another war.... The best...
any... public man of Australia can do is to endeavour to safeguard the
world against further war."

Mr Lazzarini (Labour): "The best thing to do is to be true to Australia."

Mr Charlton: "Not only true to Australia but also true to the masses of the
people throughout the world."

Mr Considine (Labour): "True to the working classes."

Mr Charlton: "The working classes embrace practically everyone... if the
Government contemplate sending contingents abroad, I trust that they will first
refer the matter to the people.... The people who had to suffer and bear all
the consequences know what war means, and should be consulted before any further
step is taken if we are to preserve our present civilisation."

Dr Page: "We (the Country party) do not believe in war but in peace with
honour. If Great Britain thinks it necessary to go to war we believe that Australia,
as part of the Great British Empire, should always be ready to come to her assistance."4

The author of this crisis was Mustapha Kemal, the same who, as a
young colonel, had saved the day for the Turks at Anzac in April 1915.
Now, a national leader, he had driven the Greeks from Asia Minor and
was approaching the Straits at Chanak where only a few British troops
(France and Italy having ordered the withdrawal of their contingents)
stood between the victorious Turkish army and an invasion of Europe
which might light the fires of war again. Lloyd George, greatly influenced

--6--

by his lieutenant, Winston Churchill, appealed to the Dominions for that
support which France and Italy had withdrawn. In common with Australia,
New Zealand had offered help, but the appeal to the Dominions had
been made so precipitately as to cause a justified resentment. The crisis
passed, but the lesson was clear: within three years a leader had arisen in
a defeated nation, had successfully challenged one of the peace treaties,
and brought the world to the brink of another large-scale war.

Next year the Government, now a coalition of the Nationalist and
Country parties led by Mr Bruce and Dr Earle Page, declared that the
bright hopes raised by the Washington Treaty had not been completely
fulfilled and that it had sought and obtained an Imperial Conference at
which problems of defence would be thrashed out. Before the delegates
departed for the conference the Opposition made it clear that it was
opposed on both political and strategical grounds to participation in the
proposed construction of a naval base at Singapore. Mr Charlton said that
he favoured aerial and submarine forces--to be used for purely local
defence. Japan, he said, had given assurances that she desired to keep the
peace. If Australia took any part in the establishment of a Singapore base,
that would be a departure from policy, because Australia had never before
agreed to assist Great Britain in defence preparations outside Australia;
and she had enough to do to see to her own defence. "The Labour party's
policy... is opposed", he said, "to the raising of forces for service outside
the Commonwealth, or promise of participation in any future oversea war
except by a decision of the people."5

"If a naval base is established at Singapore", said Senator Gardiner
(Labour), "it must lead to a division of Britain's naval strength and the
chances are that a weak navy will be left to defend the base without a
population such as we have in Australia behind it to render any assistance."6

At the Imperial Conference of 1921 the members had affirmed the
necessity for disarmament; at this conference two years later they agreed
upon the necessity for defence, and suggested (for the conference could
not decide the policies of self-governing States) guiding principles on
which it should be based.7 It was agreed that the primary responsibility
of each part of the Empire was for its own defence, that adequate provision
should be made for safeguarding maritime communications and for naval

--7--

bases, that the British Navy should be equal to that of any foreign power
(not equal to any two powers, as before 1914). The conference "took
note" of the deep interest of Australia and New Zealand in the provision
of the proposed naval base at Singapore to enable the navy to operate
effectively in the East, the provision of a safe route through the Mediterranean,
and the necessity in Great Britain of a home defence air force
able to give adequate protection against the strongest air force within
striking distance. Thus were established the principles on which Imperial
and incidentally Australian defence were to be built--in framework but
so securely, as it turned out, that nothing short of war could shake
them. The emphasis was emphatically placed on sea and air power.8 The
principles set down by the conference, though they were the fruit of seeds
of slow growth that had been planted in the previous years, were to become
so notably the basis of Australian defence doctrine and controversy that
it is desirable to examine them in some detail.

The decision to build Britain's eastern naval base at Singapore had not
passed without criticism in Britain as well as in Australia. Colonel
Repington,9 for example, an influential and conservative British military
theorist, had opposed the choice of Singapore on the grounds that it lacked
an industrialised population, was insecure, lacked food supplies, suffered
an enervating climate, and did not defend Australia and New Zealand;
and that Sydney possessed all these qualities which Singapore lacked.

The Dominion representatives (he wrote) are usually disposed to fall in with
any naval arrangements suggested by the Admiralty, which is a very authoritative
body for them. Singapore as a naval panacea has also this particular attraction for Anzac statesmen--namely,
that it does not burden their budget, but is a charge on our taxpayers at home.
If our sailors tell them that the Grand Fleet at Singapore covers Australia and New Zealand
by virtue of some flanking virtue, then the responsibility of the Admiralty is engaged;
but if the Dominion representatives take this opinion without using their brains, and there
is hereafter found a fallacy in the claim, then the responsibility towards the Dominions rests
with their own representatives.1

In the years which followed the Imperial Conference of 1923 Australian
staff officers, led by Lieut-Colonel Wynter,2 perhaps the clearest and most
profound thinker the Australian Army of his generation had produced,
not only unearthed "a fallacy" but examined and re-examined it. Briefly
to summarise the conclusions they reached in closely-reasoned lectures and
essays3: if war broke out in the Pacific it would be at a time when Britain

--8--

was prevented by events in Europe from detaching a sufficient force to the
Pacific to defeat a first-class power; that Singapore was vulnerable to
attack from the landward side; that the soundest policy for Australia
would be to maintain an army capable of defending the vital south-eastern
area of Australia against an invader until help arrived; and that Australia
should build a fleet base in her own territory as "an alternative means of
enabling the British Fleet, even if delayed in the first instance, to ultimately
operate in our defence".

However, as a consequence of the 1923 conference, the Bruce-Page
Government decided to buy two 10,000-ton cruisers and two submarines
at a cost of some £5,000,000, whereas, over a period of five years, only
£1,000,000 would be spent on additional artillery, ammunition and anti-
gas equipment for the army. In these five years expenditure on the navy
aggregated £20,000,000; on the army, including the munitions factories,
only £10,000,000; on the air force £2,400,000. The strength of the
permanent military forces remained at approximately 1,750, whereas that
of the navy rose, by 1928, to more than 5,000. During this period the
strength of the militia varied between 37,000 and 46,000 and it was, in
the opinion of Chauvel (in his report for 1927), a nucleus which did
not possess the equipment nor receive the training "essential to the effective
performance of its functions". It lacked necessary arms, including tanks
and anti-aircraft guns, he pointed out, and there was not a large enough
rank and file with which to train leaders to replace those hitherto drawn
from the old A.I.F.--a source of supply which had now dried up. In the
regular officer corps of 242 officers Chauvel found that "disparity of
opportunity and stagnation in promotion, with retention in subordinate
positions, cannot lead to the maintenance of the active, virile and efficient
staff that the service demands". The only mobile regular unit was a section
of field artillery consisting of fifty-nine men with two guns.

In the long debates on the naval proposals of the Bruce-Page Government
the defence policy of the Labour Opposition was defined. Whereas
the Government's policy was to emphasise naval at the expense of military
defence, Labour's proposal was to rely chiefly on air power and the extension
of the munitions industry. The Labour policy was clearly expressed,
in July 1924, by Mr Forde,4 a recently-elected member from North
Queensland, who said: "I believe that the Labour party when it forms a
Government... will develop an air force as a means of defence and
probably make it the first arm and will provide submarines and fortifications
... and convertible factories that could be used for the manufacture
of small arms and the building of aeroplanes in times of war, and of
farming implements in times of peace.... The factories could also undertake
the manufacture of motor bicycles and motor cars."5
However, the Labour party was to be in office for only two years and
a quarter in the period between the wars, and consequently Australia's

--9--

defence policy was closely to follow the principles set down in 1923: these
emphasised ultimate reliance on the British Navy to which Australia
would contribute an independent squadron as strong as she considered she
could afford, and a particular reliance on the base at Singapore,6 from
which the British fleet would operate in defence of British Far Eastern
and Pacific interests. At the same time a nucleus militia, air force, and
munitions industry would be maintained. No precise definition of what
constituted a just contribution to British naval strength was reached. In
1925-26 (as Mr Bruce pointed out) each British citizen was paying 51s 1d
for defence, each Australian only 27s 2d. But the per capita cost of
defence in Canada (which could rely on the protection of the United
States) was only 5s 10d, in New Zealand 12s lid and in South Africa
2s 6d.7 That Australia was paying interest on a heavy overseas debt, that
she was paying more than other Dominions for defence and that she
urgently needed money for developmental works were facts often quoted
by members of all parties as reasons why the defence vote could not be
increased nor a contribution made to the cost of Singapore, but no one
appears to have sought a formula whereby the cost of the defence of the
Empire as a whole could be divided fairly among the members.

Thus the army did not share largely in the comparatively small increases
that were made in the defence vote each year from 1924 to 1928. In his
annual reports during this period Chauvel continued to direct attention to
the declining effectiveness of the militia, and also to the stout-hearted
endeavours of the little permanent force and of those militia officers and
men who carried on staunchly despite discouragement, and, as Chauvel
emphasised, "without expectation of material reward". This was not an
over-statement of the situation. Highly-trained young officers who had
been majors and captains in the A.I.F. of ten years before were still
serving as adjutants of militia units whose citizen members were assembled
for only eight days' continuous training each year and which were at only
25 per cent of their war strength. However, the system whereby each
young lieutenant spent a year with the British Army in the United Kingdom
or India, and a number of more-senior officers were always overseas on
exchange duty or attending courses at British schools helped to keep the
officer corps from stagnation.8 Gains in equipment were microscopic: in
1926 the army obtained its first motor vehicles--five 30-cwt lorries, one
for each military district except the Sixth (Tasmania), and eight tractors
for the artillery; in 1927 four light tanks arrived. Nor could the army
comfort itself with the reflection that, when the need arose, it could
commandeer even enough horses, because, as Chauvel pointed out, the
breeding of working horses had so declined that Australia was not only
losing her export trade in army horses but it was doubtful whether there

--10--

were enough suitable animals in the continent to mobilise the seven
divisions. To the militia officers these circumstances were equally discouraging,
and the fact that they were willing to devote their spare time
to so exacting a hobby--and a keen officer had to give all his leisure to
it--was evidence of uncommon enthusiasm for soldiering and, in most
instances, an impelling desire to perform a public service.

There was in Australia no organised group to press for more effective
military defence, nor any journal in which military and naval problems
were discussed with authority. In his first report, in 1921, Chauvel had
urged the re-establishment of the Commonwealth Military Journal which
had been published from 1911 to 1915 and to which officers of permanent
and citizen forces had been "cordially invited" to contribute. Nothing
came of this suggestion and, with one small exception, no military journal
existed in Australia between the wars. To the extent that they thus failed
to establish an adequate channel of communication with the people at
large, the officer corps, both professional and amateur, must share, with
the political leaders and the press, the responsibility for neglect of the
army. In the Staff Corps and militia were men who had something to
say and knew how to say it, but their writings were to be seen in British
journals, chiefly in the Army Quarterly which was read in Australia almost
solely by officers of their own Services. Criticism was discouraged by
political leaders and their attitude affected the senior officers of the
Services, and seeped downwards. As far as the Staff Corps was concerned
the truth was that its members' otherwise outstanding education had
included no instruction in what came later to be called "public relations",
and their subsequent careers travelled in a narrow professional groove.
The low pay9 helped to prevent them from taking their proper place in
social life outside the army and the corps became isolated to an extent
that was exceedingly inappropriate in a group which was administering a
citizen army. A fully-justified resentment of the parsimonious treatment
they had received from Governments developed into mistrust of the
political leaders who decided the policy they had to administer, and of the
press which alone could educate the public in the principles of defence. In
justice it must be said that the mistrust was reciprocated. Antipathy to
the professional soldier was probably even more widespread in Australia
than in Britain. Upon the Englishman's (and particularly the Irishman's)
traditional misgivings concerning regular armies had been superimposed,
in Australia, recollections of the semi-military police force of the late
Victorian period.1 The vehement denunciation of "brass hats" by Labour
members of Parliament has often found an echo in the Liberal as well as
the Labour press. Peace-time military service conferred little prestige;
indeed, an Australian who made the militia a hobby was likely to be

--11--

regarded by his acquaintances as a peculiar fellow with an eccentric taste
for uniforms and the exercise of petty authority. (This prejudice was the
more striking by reason of its contrast with the Australian affection for
uniforms, brass bands and ritual in sport--in horse racing, for example,
and particularly in surf life-saving, where an ultra-military devotion to drill
was developed.)

Soldiers and soldiering were in particularly bad odour in the late
'twenties. From 1927 onwards for four or five years, a sudden revival of
interest in the war that had ended ten years before produced a series of
angry war novels and memoirs of which Remarque's All Quiet on the
Western Front, Graves' Good-bye to All That and Arnold Zweig's The
Case of Sergeant Grischa were among the most popular.

The object, conscious or unconscious, of all these books (one contemporary critic wrote)
is to simplify and sentimentalise the problem of war and peace until the problem disappears
in a silly gesture of complacent moral superiority, and the four years of war are shown idiotically
as four years of disastrous, sanguinary and futile battles in which everything was lost and nothing
gained, a struggle begun for no purpose and continued for no reason.2

Whether this criticism was right or wrong, these books and the plays
and moving pictures that accompanied them undoubtedly did much to
mould the attitude of the people generally and particularly of the intelligentsia to war
and soldiers, and produced rather widely a conviction that
wars are always ineffectual, are brought about by military leaders and by
the large engineering industries which profit by making weapons, and that
if soldiers and armaments could be abolished wars would cease.

It was, however, not so much a desire for disarmament, and for the
peace which was widely believed to be the sequel to disarmament, but
another factor that was to produce substantial and sudden reductions in
the armies and navies of the world. In October 1929 share prices in New
York began to collapse; soon the entire world was suffering an acute
trade depression.

It happened that a Labour Ministry took office in Australia in October
1929 for the first time since the conscription crisis of 1917, and the day
after the first sudden drop on the New York Stock Exchange. Before the
full effects of the distant catastrophe were apparent, the new Ministers
who, harking back to an old controversy, had promised the electors that
if the Labour party was returned it would abolish compulsory training,
ordered (on 1st November 1929) that conscription be suspended, and
cancelled all military camps arranged for the current year. At the same

--12--

time the new Prime Minister, Mr Scullin,3 instructed the Defence Committee4
to submit an alternative plan for an equally adequate defence.
There would, he said, be no discharges of permanent staff. Accordingly
the Defence Council submitted a plan, which was eventually adopted, to
maintain a voluntary militia5 of 35,000 with 7,000 senior cadets. The
militiamen would undergo eight days' training in camp and eight days'
home training, in the local drill halls, each year. Five infantry battalions
and two light horse regiments were abolished by linking pairs of units,
and the establishment of most of the remaining battalions was fixed at
somewhat less than half the war strength.

In reaction Mr Roland Green6 (Country party) who had lost a leg
serving in the infantry made a bitter speech in the House of Representatives
recalling that Scullin and other Labour leaders, including Messrs
Makin, Holloway7 and Blackburn,8 had attended a Labour conference in
Perth in June 1918 when a resolution was passed that if the Imperial
authorities did not at once open negotiations for peace the Australian
divisions be brought back to Australia, and calling on the organised
workers of every country to take similar action. "As a result of that
attitude", said Green, "Labour was out of office in the Commonwealth
for thirteen years, largely because of the votes of the soldiers and their
friends. During all that time the party nursed its hatred of the soldiers,
and now it is seeking revenge."9

Mr Scullin was a sincere pacifist. When in the Opposition he had complained
with fervour that the children were being taught to believe in
the glory of war and had spoken at length in defence of his action in
advocating peace in 1918. His decision to abolish compulsory training
was founded on staunchly-held yet muddled moral principles; but the
burden of carrying it out fell upon the same small and over-tried team
of officers, both professional and amateur, who had tenaciously been maintaining
the spirit and efficiency of the citizen army through nine lean years
and now had even leaner ones to look forward to. They "rose to the
occasion", as Chauvel wrote in his final report as Inspector-General,1 and
in the first four months of 1930 their recruiting efforts and the response
of the young men, though they did not achieve the 35,000 enlistments
that had been authorised, produced a new militia of 24,000, with an
additional 5,300 in the volunteer senior cadets--a relic of the big, well-

--13--

organised cadet force in which all boys of 14 to 17 had formerly been
given elementary training.2 The numbers increased gradually in the following
year and between 1931 and 1936 the number of militiamen fluctuated
between 26,000 and 29,000. This strength, however, was about 2,000
fewer than that of the volunteer forces of the States when they were
amalgamated into a Commonwealth force in 1901; the permanent force
too stood at about the same figure as it had twenty-nine years before. In
1901, when the population of Australia was 3,824,000, the permanent
forces aggregated 1,544, the partly-paid militia and unpaid volunteers
27,400. In June 1930, when the population was 6.500,000, the permanent
forces totalled 1,669, the militia 25,785.

The abolition of compulsory training had been based purely on a
political doctrine; but within a few months economic necessity produced
still more severe reductions in the three Services. Exports declined and
revenue fell. Unemployment increased, and the new Government became
enmeshed in a bitter controversy about its proposal (which it was forced
to abandon) that the principle of preference to returned soldiers in
Government employment be replaced by preference to unionists. Defence
expenditure was reduced from £6,536,000 in 1928-29 to £3,859,000 in
1930-31.3 Such cuts could not be made without discharging hundreds of
officers and men. Five naval vessels were paid off and the establishment
of the navy cut by 700 men. The permanent military forces were reduced
by discharges from 1,748 to 1,556 between 1929 and 1931, and further
discharges were saved only by requiring officers and men to take up to
eight weeks' annual leave without pay-an adversity which, the soldiers
declared, the Ministers would not have dared to inflict upon the more

--14--

vocal civilian public service. The number of cadets in training at the
Royal Military College at Duntroon was diminished from an average of
sixty in the late 1920s to barely thirty in 1931, the buildings at Duntroon
were closed and the College removed to Victoria Barracks in Sydney.
A number of regular officers resigned; others transferred to the British or
Indian Armies.

Added justification for the starvation of the fighting Services appeared
to be given by the agreement at the London Naval Conference of 1930 whereby
the navies of the principal powers were further reduced and the size of ships in
several categories were further limited, and by progress
towards a wider disarmament. At the Imperial Conference in 1930 there
were no plenary discussions of defence. Mr Ramsay MacDonald who led
the United Kingdom delegation had been a pacifist in 1914-18 and was a
leader in the international movement towards disarmament. The three
Australian ministers who attended (Messrs Scullin, Frank Brennan and
Parker Moloney) were among those who had spoken most vigorously
against participation in the war of 1914-18 and against Australian defence
measures.

However, before the world had emerged from the depression, signs of
danger of war appeared in Asia and Europe. Towards the end of 1931
Japan had begun to occupy Manchuria, and, in the following year, after
having refused to accept the effort of the international committee to settle
the dispute, declared that she would resign from the League. Nevertheless
most leaders were content to regard this episode as too remote and the
factors too complex to demand extreme action, or even to justify anxiety.
But in 1933 events in Europe finally destroyed immediate hope of achieving
disarmament and establishing the rule of law among the nations. In
January of that year power had been seized in Germany by Hitler's
National-Socialist oligarchy whose program included winning back
Germany's lost territories and smashing any other military power that
existed or might exist in Europe. In October Germany withdrew from the
Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations. Before this critical
year was over, the need for repairing the armed Services was being canvassed
by politicians and publicists in Australia. Brig-General McNicoll,4
one of a group of soldiers, professional and citizen, who had been elected
to the Federal Parliament in 1931,5 when the Labour party was defeated,
declared that "a wave of enthusiasm... has passed over Australia about
the need for effective defence".6 This was perhaps an exaggeration, but
nevertheless, there was undoubtedly evidence of some alarm and of an
increasing discussion of foreign affairs and their significance to Australia.

--15--

However, Mr Makin, still a believer that by reducing armies one could
ensure peace, was able in the House of Representatives in November 1933
to quote leaders as diverse as Professor Stephen Roberts, Bishop Thomas
of Adelaide, Sir Thomas Henley (a conspicuous leader of patriotic movements) and the Reverend J. W. Burton (a distinguished Methodist) as
having deplored "the alarm of the last two months". "The best way to
secure peace is to get rid of some of the `brass hats'," interjected Mr
Ward,8 a young Labour member. "The dismissal of the military junta
would no doubt assist in that direction," added Makin.9 In the excitement
of debate members may make comments which they do not wish to be
taken literally, but that point may not be apparent to those at whom the
comments are aimed--in this case the senior soldiers.

The response of the Government of Mr. Lyons,1 who led the United
Australia party, successor to the Nationalist party, to the increasingly
apparent need to strengthen the fighting Services was cautious. The scars
left by the depression had not healed and the Government considered that
its first responsibility was to bring about economic recovery. Between
1933 and 1935 the defence vote was increased only gradually until, at
the end of that period, it had almost reached the figure of 1928. The
question what principles were to guide the expenditure of this slowly
increasing vote and the larger sums that seemed likely to follow assumed
a greater importance than in the late 'twenties because the need now
seemed more urgent. The difference between the military policies of the
two groups in Federal politics had it roots deep in their history and
doctrines. A penetrating statement of this variance was made in the House
towards the end of the period now under review by Mr. Blackburn, a
clear-sighted and sometimes heterodox leader of Labour thought. "On
this issue (he said) the difference between the policy of the supporters of
the Government and of the members of the Labour party appears to be
this: The defence policy of the Government and of its supporters is to be
planned and operated in cooperation with Great Britain and other members
of the British Commonwealth of Nations; that is to say it is to fit into the
mosaic of a general Imperial scheme to be directed by the Imperial
authorities, the Australian authorities merely doing their part in effectuating
the general scheme. On the other hand the Labour party, and the
Labour movement generally, believe that the defence policy of this country
should be one which has regard to the possibility of Australia being
attacked and should be designed solely for the purpose of warding off
an attack. That is to say, the Australian Labour Party's scheme of defence
does not fit into the Imperial or British scheme of defence at all, whereas
the Commonwealth Government's scheme does."2 He recalled that at the

--16--

Perth conference of the Labour party in 1918 a special provision had
been included in the party's platform to provide that action overseas
could be taken only with the consent of the Australian people.3

Labour's policy, in the words of one of its critics, was "to confine the
fighting forces to formations whose object is purely local defence against
invasion by means of submarines and aircraft; and to military forces upon
a national service basis whose liability for service does not extend outside
the territory of the Dominion".4 The policy of the Government party, on
the other hand, had been expressed, at least since the Imperial Conference
of 1923, in a concentration on naval rather than military defence, and in
periodical statements that it adhered first and foremost to the principle of
Imperial cooperation.

The Government had in fact, throughout these years, adopted its policy,
ready-made and with little amendment, from the Committee of Imperial
Defence. A weakness of this body was that, although it included the
British ministers likely to be concerned with the framing of war policy, and
the Chiefs of Staff of the British fighting Services, and had an extremely
competent secretariat led by Sir Maurice Hankey,5 it contained no permanent
representatives of the Dominions. Such representatives might be
summoned to advise on business that closely affected their governments,
and would attend during Imperial conferences; the department of the
Australian Chief of the General Staff was entitled "Australian Section,
Imperial General Staff"; exchange of senior officers in all Services, and
the attendance of Dominions' officers at the English staff colleges and the
Imperial Defence College somewhat strengthened liaison and encouraged
discussion of higher policy. But, if Australian and New Zealand officers
at those colleges frequently expressed disagreement with British military
policy towards the problem of Japan, for example, that fact was not likely
to affect the plans of the Committee of Imperial Defence, whose permanent
members, secretary, four assistant secretaries (one from each Service and
one from India) were servants of the United Kingdom Government. The
committee carried out continuously the study of Imperial war problems,
but without an influential contribution from the Dominions. It shaped a
military policy which carried great weight with Dominion ministers; yet in
the eyes of Dominion soldiers the committee could justly be regarded as a
somewhat parochial group, since it was possible that none of its members
had ever been in a Dominion or in the Far East. At the worst such a
method of forming military policy could lead to errors due to ignorance
of conditions in remoter theatres; at the best it was a waste of leaders to
draw all of them in the central offices of the British Commonwealth from

--17--

the forty-six millions of the United Kingdom and none from the twenty-two
millions of the oversea Dominions.

In 1925 a gifted young Australian, Major Selby,6 advocated the establishment
of a genuinely Imperial General Staff including senior representatives
of the Dominions, which, although possessing no executive authority
in peace, would, on the outbreak of war, take control of the British
Commonwealth forces under the authority of an Imperial War Cabinet.7
The Gallipoli campaign was then only ten years old. It involved, Selby
wrote, "an expenditure of life and material out of proportion to the results
achieved, and the burden of this loss fell partly upon two Dominions whose
Governments were not in a position to influence effectively the course of
events." If such a plan was to be achieved it was likely to come about
only at the urging of a Dominion, and particularly of Australia, which was
the least secure of the Dominions; it was improbable that the British
Government would seek to reduce its authority in strategical matters. On
the other hand the sharing of a general staff implied a sharing of responsibility,
which the Dominions were unwilling to accept without reservations.
At the Imperial Conference of 1937, for example, the Australian delegation,
when bringing forward a proposal for the preparation by the Committee
of Imperial Defence (with Dominion representatives present) of
plans for cooperation between the parts of the Empire, emphasised that
there could be no commitment without the approval of the Governments
concerned.

Within Australia an outcome of dependence on advice from London
and the consequent failure to develop a home-grown defence plan was
that successive ministers failed also to work out a policy which, while
integrated with the plans of the British Commonwealth as a whole,
reconciled the differing viewpoints of the army and the navy. Always the
ministers' aim seemed to be to make a compromise division of the
allotted defence fund (invariably too small to be effective) among three
competing services.

Both Government and Labour defence theories were strongly criticised.
The Government policy was attacked by some Government supporters as
well as by the Labour Opposition on the ground that it disregarded that
the British Navy did not, and could not (while the naval treaties lasted)
spare a sufficient force to command Eastern seas, that Britain lacked
military and air power even to defend her own bases in the East, and
therefore that Australia should take what measures she could to defend
herself. Labour's policy was denounced because it left out of account
that Australia's fate could and probably would be decided in distant
seas or on distant battlefields. Gradually those members of the Labour
party who had begun to inform themselves upon defence problems discovered
that leaders of Australian military thought were able to go part

Militiamen using civilian transport during exercises at Port Stephens, N.S.W., in October 1938.

(Sydney Morning Herald photos)
Drawing rations at a field kitchen during the Port Stephens exercise, 7th October 1938.

--18--

(Sydney Morning Herald photo)
An 18-pounder of the 1st Field Brigade firing during the exercise at Port Stephens.

of the way with them. In their ten-years-old argument against Admiralty
doctrines and particularly against the Singapore thesis the army leaders
had adopted a position not far remote from that which the Labour party
was reaching. Thus, when Admiral Richmond,8 the senior British naval
theorist of his day, attacked, in the British Army Quarterly, a theory of
Australian defence that resembled the Labour party's in some respects,
his argument was countered (in the same journal) by Colonel Lavarack,1
then Commandant of the Royal Military College, Duntroon. And when, in
1936, a lecture which had been given to a small group of officers sixteen
months before by Colonel Wynter, the Director of Military Training,
came into the hand of Mr Curtin,2 leader of the Parliamentary Labour
Party, he read it, without betraying its authorship, as a speech in the
House, presumably as an expression of the policy of his party.3 When
Sir Archdale Parkhill,4 the Minister for Defence, who rose next, had
finished speaking, Mr Brennan said: "I think that I can congratulate the
Minister for Defence upon the very excellent manner in which he read
the speech that had been prepared for him by the bunch of militarist
imperialists whose business it is to discharge that function."

Mr Parkhill: "The honourable member might with more justification,
pass that comment upon the speech of his leader."

Mr Brennan (still not on the right wave-length) "... our association
with the British Navy is entirely an evil one.... I stand today exactly
as I stood twenty years ago."5 It was undeniable that Mr Brennan had
not changed his position; but the leaders of his party now stood on other
ground.

This incident led to an episode which is recorded here because it and
another similar occurrence in the same year added greatly to the resentment
felt by the regular officer corps towards the right-wing political
leaders. The copy of Wynter's lecture, which contained substantially the
same argument as he had published in an English journal ten years before,
had been handed to Curtin by a member of the Government party who,
like others of that party, was critical of the Government's defence policy.
Four months later Wynter was transferred to a very junior post. One
month after Wynter 's demotion Lieut-Colonel Beavis,6 a highly-qualified
equipment officer with long training and experience in England, who
had been chosen to advise on and coordinate plans for manufacturing

--19--

arms and equipment in Australia was similarly transferred to a
relatively junior post after differences of opinion with a senior departmental
official?7

Not only was a Labour defence policy taking positive shape, but, from
1935 onwards, discussion of defence was becoming a topic of major
interest in the newspapers and reviews. More books and pamphlets on the
subject were published between 1935 and 1939 than during the previous
thirty-four years of the Commonwealth. It was a statement in an eloquent
book on defence by Mr Hughes8 to the effect that economic sanctions
meant war which so embarrassed his leader, Mr Lyons, during the debate
on the Abyssinian crisis, that Hughes was compelled to resign from the
Cabinet; in the back benches, however, Hughes continued to play a part
similar to Winston Churchill's in the House of Commons, warning the
nation that war was approaching and it should arm without delay.
Expenditure on defence was slightly increased year by year, but the note
of apology for only limited achievement in the explanatory speeches,
particularly of Parkhill, was an indication of the Government's awareness
that there was a growing public opinion in favour of more rapid progress.
In 1935, when explaining the details of a three-year plan of re-equipment
Parkhill explained that "the priorities laid down by the Government could
not be accelerated to any degree", contending that the equipment ordered
from overseas could not be obtained sooner. It was true that by giving
priority to coast defences, the purchase of cruisers and the expansion of
operational air squadrons the Government had, to an extent, created
bottlenecks, because all these depended on oversea purchases at a time
when the demand on British workshops was increasing and deliveries likely to be delayed.

For the army the three-year plan (for the years 1934-35 to 1936-37)
included the purchase of motor vehicles on a limited scale, increased
stocks of ammunition, and "an instalment of modern technical equipment"
a phrase whose modesty was justified, because the £127,743 that
was allotted to the army for its development program in the first year
and the £1,005,792 for the second was merely a token in view of the fact
that the army was and always had been incompletely equipped by 1918
standards. It could not mobilise even a brigade without commandeering
civil vehicles, and now had to base its plans on the assumption that it
would be engaged, if war came, against armies (such as the German)
whose weapons belonged to a new epoch.

The keen discussion of defence in the four years to 1939 was only one
aspect of that unprecedented interest within Australia in the affairs of the
outside world which in its turn was a response to the alarming march of
events in Europe and east Asia. In the west Hitler's Germany re-introduced

--20--

conscription in March 1935, and next year the Italian attack on Ethiopia
revealed the impotence of the League of Nations. "We are faced,"
Churchill had said in comment upon Germany's open breach of the Peace
Treaty, "not with the prospect of a new war, but with something very like
the possibility of a resumption of the war which ended in November
1918,"9 and this and later warnings were echoed increasingly by a
minority of political leaders and publicists both of the Right and the Left
throughout the British Commonwealth.

In Australia during these four years the foundations of Government
(United Australia Party) defence policy remained unshaken. They were
still those principles which had been defined at the Imperial Conference
of 1923 and were confirmed at a new Imperial Conference in 1937.

The basis of Australian defence policy (said the Australian report on the 1937
conference) was described as participation in Empire naval defence for the protection
of sea-borne trade, as a deterrent to invasion and as a general measure of defence against
raids, combined with local defence to provide a further deterrent to and a defence against
invasion and raids. The great importance from the Australian point of view of the Singapore
base was noticed... the guiding principles of the Imperial Conferences of 1923 and 1926 had
been adopted by... Australia as the basis of its policy...1

Those Australian soldiers who had urged greater expenditure of men
and money on the army had based their argument chiefly on the vulnerability
of Singapore, the unlikelihood of a fleet being there at the critical
time and the existence of a period, perhaps a long one, during which
Australia would have to depend principally on her army. In the course
of a comprehensive strategical review that was presented to the Imperial
Conference of 1937 the British Chiefs of Staff2 made suggestions which
implied that there was another reason why the Dominions should maintain
forces ready for immediate action. They pointed out that the earliest phase
of a war against Germany or a world war would be the most dangerous
to Britain and, therefore, to the Empire as a whole. Consequently help
given by the Dominions in the early phase would be more valuable than
the same help six months later. "However willing any Member of the
British Commonwealth... may be to throw its weight into the war,
her contribution during this earlier phase will be dependent upon the
preparatory measures... taken in time of peace." In military terms
this meant that divisions ready to serve in the main theatre as soon as
war broke out would be worth far more than an offer to raise, train and
arm divisions to take part in operations after the expected crisis had passed--a platitude,
were it not that the Dominions lacked equipped and trained
military formations. "We believe," concluded the Chiefs of Staff, "that the
greatest service in the cause of peace which the Members... can give
... is to demonstrate to the world a determination to rearm and a
readiness to defend their vital interests."

--21--

However, the Admiralty presented to the conference an appendix to
this general review which contained the words so comforting to Australian
eyes that they may well have dulled the effect of the exhortation issued
by the three Chiefs of Staff:

A Japanese overseas expedition aimed at Australia, New Zealand or India may
consequently be said to be a highly improbable undertaking so long as our position at
Singapore is secure, and the Fleets of the British Commonwealth of Nations are maintained
at such a strength as to enable a force capable of containing the Japanese Fleet to be
dispatched to the Far East, should the occasion arise.

But it will be recalled that critics of reliance on the Singapore base as
the hub of Imperial defence in the East maintained that Britain's position
at Singapore was not secure and that an adequate fleet would probably
not be available in a crisis; some contended that, in any event, the base
was too distant from the possible Japanese line of advance to the south.
The Australian delegates reported to the conference that the main
features of her immediate defence plans were the acquisition of a new
cruiser and two sloops, rearmament of the coast defences, an increase in
the air force to a first-line strength of ninety-six machines and a survey
of civil industry to discover to what extent it could supplement the output
of the Government munition factories.3 After the conference Australian
military preparations continued in the same direction and at much the
same pace as before. Nevertheless the army leaders now pressed for
accelerated expenditure on the equipment of the field army, even if it
meant rearming the coast defences more slowly, arguing that coast
defences might be taken in the rear if the field army was not converted
into an effective force.

Criticism of the established defence policy was now being offered not
only by Labour leaders who brought forward their traditional arguments,
but by an increasing volume of more or less technical writing about the
probable nature of the coming war in the Pacific. In Britain there was again
a group of naval theorists who dissented from the doctrine that the maintenance
of the Singapore base was an adequate protection of British
interests in the Far East, arguing that an adequate fleet would not be there
at the critical time. At the same time, in some carefully reasoned studies
of the likely course of a war between Japan and the United States, the
conclusion was reached that, in the opening phase, the United States
would lose the Philippines and Guam, and her subsequent offensive against
Japan would take the form of a gradual advance across the Pacific from
the east capturing and consolidating island bases as she moved forward.4

--22--

The acceptance of such opinions by Australians entailed preparing a more
substantial local defence than one which would ensure them merely against
raids and providing a far larger contribution to the Imperial navy (whose
total strength, limited by treaty, Australia had hitherto been unable to
increase).

As the threat of war became more apparent so the Labour party, under
Curtin's leadership, based its defence policy, at the technical level, more
and more definitely on the doctrines of those military and naval critics
who contended that Australia first and foremost must prepare defence
against invasion during a critical period when she might be isolated from
Britain and the United States. Such a policy was easy to fit in with
Labour's traditional opposition to conscription, to the dispatch of volunteer
forces overseas, and with Labour's desire to increase the scope of Australian
secondary industry. Labour speakers continued to place emphasis
on aircraft, torpedo craft, and the manufacture of munitions to equip a
citizen army limited to service in Australia. The Government leaders stood
firm by the decisions of 1923--a "fair contribution" to an "essentially
naval" scheme of Imperial defence.

Whilst (Parkhill had said in 1936) the old Colonial idea of Empire defence as
one of complacent trust in the Royal Navy, and nothing more, has been replaced by
a conception of the defence of the common interests of a family of sovereign
nations, the backbone of the defence of the British Commonwealth is still essentially
naval, and will remain so as long as oceans link the shores of its members....
It is accordingly the policy of the Government to maintain the Royal Australian Navy
at a strength which is a fair contribution to Empire Naval Defence.5

The Government's conception of what constituted a fair contribution
in 1935-36, the year of the Ethiopian campaign and of civil war in Spain,
may be gauged by the fact that the estimated expenditure on defence was
then £7,583,822, which was the largest in any year since the war. In the
next year, however, the year of the renewed war in China and the capture
of Austria, the figure rose to £8,829,655. In 1938 (when taxation was
increased for the first time since 1932) the Treasurer, Mr Casey,6 was
able to say:

With reference to defence I can assure you that there has been no stinting of
money here in Australia. Three years ago we were spending five or six million
pounds a year; two years ago we were spending eight million pounds; and this year we are spending eleven and a half million pounds.... Defence is the only department of the Commonwealth Government that, from the financial point of
view, has been able to "write its own ticket." Any money defence wants it can
get, and I can assure you that this situation will remain.7

--23--

How had the army in particular fared after 1935 when, for the first
time since the depression, its annual income was raised to approximately
the sum that it had received in the 'twenties? At the beginning of this
period of recuperation a relatively young officer, Colonel Lavarack, was
promoted over the heads of a number of his colleagues and made Chief
of the General Staff. The army whose rebuilding he had to control consisted
of 1,800 "permanent" officers and other ranks, compared with 3,000
in 1914, and 27,000 militiamen compared with 42,000 in 1914. Its
equipment had been supplemented hardly at all since the A.I.F. had
brought it home from France and Palestine; and it was the equipment
only of the seven divisions, but not equipment for the many supporting
units that are needed for an army based on seven divisions--such units
had been provided in the war of 1914-18 by the British Army. It lacked
also mortars and anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns; it lacked tanks, armoured
cars, and a variety of engineer and signal gear; it had inadequate reserves
of ammunition. In recommending how the moderately-increased army vote
be spent Lavarack's policy did not differ materially from that laid down
fifteen years before by the Senior Officers' Conference of 1920; broadly
it was: training of commanders and staff first, equipment next, and, lastly,
the training (or semi-training, for that is all it could be) of more militia men.
The allotment of priorities was assisted by a plan under which three
degrees of mobilisation were contemplated. The first was designed to meet
war with a distant enemy and would entail only the manning of coast
defences and the calling-up of a few militia units. The second was to meet
a situation in which raids were possible but full-dress invasion improbable,
and would require the assembly of a field army of two divisions and seven
independent brigades of cavalry and infantry. The third--full mobilisation--would
bring into the field the five infantry and two cavalry divisions,
200,000 men in all not allowing for reinforcements. To produce such a
force would demand an exacting national effort; on the purely military
level it would be necessary, for example, for each brigade of three nucleus
battalions not only to bring itself to full strength but to produce a fourth
battalion. (The army at that time was still planning on a basis of four-
battalion brigades.) The leaders were thus faced with the problem of
making plans for a full mobilisation which would entail, to pursue our
example, expanding each so-called brigade of perhaps 900 partly-trained,
poorly-equipped militia, without transport, into a full brigade of some
3,600 equipped and mobile infantrymen.

The adoption of these three degrees of mobilisation served incidentally
to give the staff an ascending series of objectives. The first priority was
still given to the rearmament of the out-dated coast defences of Sydney,
Newcastle and Brisbane on the east coast, and Fremantle on the west.

The aims of the army (said a newspaper article based on interviews with
Lavarack and some of his staff) are to concentrate first on acquiring the best new equipment,
so that the Australian soldier will be armed at least as well as any attacker; at the same time
to prepare for the rapid mechanisation of a large army by constant experimenting in the improvisation
of military from commercial

--24--

vehicles; to maintain and improve the efficiency of the nucleus of permanent
staff officers and instructors on the one hand, and of militia leaders and specialists
on the other; to place along the coast near the great industrial centres coastal
batteries against which no naval force would venture.8

Plans for full mobilisation were based on the assumption that the enemy
(Japan) would attack at a time when Australia was isolated from British
or American naval aid and would seek a quick decision. The enemy,
using carrier-borne aircraft, would, it was assumed, first attempt to destroy
the defending air force and to impose a blockade. He would then occupy
an advanced naval and air base somewhere outside the relatively well
defended Newcastle-Sydney-Port Kembla area. When his main force was
ready he could move overland from this advanced base, whence his force
would receive the protection of land-based aircraft, or he could make a
new landing farther south.9 The Australian mobilisation plans provided
for the concentration of the greater part of the army in the vital Newcastle
Port Kembla area; the army could not be strong everywhere.

It was seen that the accomplishment of even such a modest plan of
military defence would take years to achieve despite the larger funds
that the Government was then allotting. The sum of £1,811,000 was
spent on the army in 1935-36, £2,232,000 in 1936-37, £2,182,000 in
1937-38; but one battery of 9.2-inch coast defence guns with its essential
equipment cost £300,000, a battery of anti-aircraft guns with its gear
and ammunition cost £150,000. In fact, until the crises of 1938, the
army, which had been placed on short rations in 1930, received only
enough nourishment to enable it to restore a little of the weight it had
lost since the depression and to repair some of the deficiencies it had
suffered since 1918. Nor can it be doubted that the army leaders, in whom
the years of parsimony had produced a distrust of politicians, were resolved
to spend such funds as they received on something that the politician
could not take away from them if the crisis seemed to have passed and
the army's income could be cut again. Thus there was this additional
reason for giving priority to guns and concrete rather than men and
training: that if the vote was again reduced, the guns and concrete would
remain. In the early years of rearmament at any rate, while some leaders
on the liberal side in Parliament favoured a return to compulsory
training, the army staff was happy enough about the retention of voluntary
service while it spent its limited funds chiefly on that equipment without
which a larger army would be of small value.

In the first two months of 1938, however, events in Europe and China
began to move too rapidly to permit such leisurely rearmament. "What
we are seeking to do is to get a general appeasement throughout Europe
which will give us peace," said Chamberlain on 21st February.1 In the

Evidence of the alarm that was felt by the Australian Government was
provided a month later when Mr Lyons announced that it was proposed
in the next three years to spend £43,000,000 on the fighting Services
and munitions. This was more than twice what had been spent in the
previous three years. The army would receive £11,500,000, the air
force £12,500,000 and the navy £15,000,000. Since 1920 the navy
had year by year received more money than the army; now, for the
first time, the air force too was promised a larger appropriation than
the army's. Lyons announced too that an Inspector-General of the Army
would be appointed, adding that "no authoritative report had been made
on the army since the Senior Officers' Conference of A.I.F. war leaders
in 1920"3--a poor compliment to the wise and frank reports which Sir
Harry Chauvel had presented as Inspector-General between 1920 and
1930. Compared with the sum it had been receiving hitherto the army's
new income, though the least of the three Services', was astronomical; yet
in December 1938, after the Munich crisis, Mr Street,4 the newly-
appointed Minister for Defence, announced that the total of £43,000,000
for defence would be increased by an additional £19,504,000 to be spent
during the three years which would end in 1941.

Excitement ran high in November and December of 1938. As a result
of a recruiting campaign directed by Major-General Sir Thomas Blamey,5
and in which the indefatigable Mr Hughes took a leading part, the
militia was increased in numbers from 35,000 in September to 43,000
at the end of the year and 70,000, which was the objective, in March--22,000
more than the conscripted militia of 1929. This was a memorable
achievement, unparalleled in any country which maintained a voluntary
militia.6 A night march of militiamen, now dressed in neater uniforms,
through the streets of Sydney was watched by a crowd which the newspapers
estimated at 100,000. A reserve of veterans of the A.I.F. and the
British Army was established to reinforce militia units and form garrison
battalions when war broke out. It was a strange turn of events that Mr
Scullin's abolition of conscription had made necessary those very military
parades and ornate uniforms that he detested.

Major-General Squires7 had been selected for the newly-revived post of
Inspector-General and had taken up his appointment in June 1938. The
Cabinet's decision to seek an officer of the British service as Inspector-
General emphasised the extent to which a spirit of dependence on the
parent country had survived; a British soldier (or admiral or air vice marshal)
was considered likely to possess virtues an Australian could
not acquire. Squires was a competent senior staff officer, but there were
several in the Australian Army who possessed equally high attainments
and equal experience of war, even if one left out of account a number of
generals--some of them younger than Squires--who might have been
recalled from retirement to undertake the task. Squires had no experience
of the Dominions or the special problems of Dominion armies; Australia
had taken pains to create an expert corps of officers whose initial training
was considerably longer than that given at the British military colleges,
and whose post-graduate education was gained in part at British and
Indian schools and staff colleges and on exchange duty in England and
India. It was unfortunate that, when an "authoritative report" on the
army was sought, the Government made an appointment which could be
read as implying a lack of confidence in its own officer corps. When war
broke out Squires was appointed Chief of the General Staff; a few months
later the Government chose a British officer to be Chief of the Air Staff;
the First Naval Member was already an officer of the British Service.
Consequently in the early months of 1940 the Government's three senior
advisers in the Services were officers with limited experience of Australian
problems or the Australian people.

As Squires' staff officer--an important post because the newcomer
would inevitably be greatly dependent on his advice--was chosen Lieut-Colonel
Rowell,8 a highly-qualified soldier twelve years Squires' junior
who was considered one of the ablest of the early Duntroon graduates
and had spent more than five of the previous thirteen years at British
schools or with the British Army. Squires presented to the Government
a report on the development of the army, and in March 1939 this report

more or less with one or other of the States) and the infantry and cavalry
divisions be regrouped into four "commands"--Northern (Queensland),
Eastern (New South Wales), Southern (Victoria, Tasmania and South
Australia), and Western, with an independent garrison at Darwin--each
of which would be responsible for the training and, in war, for the
operations of the formations in its area.9 Under this system, which required
an amendment of the Defence Act and was not brought into operation

The fate of this proposed nucleus of a regular army was significant
both of the continuing hesitancy of the Ministers to commit the country
to heavy expenditure on the fighting Services and of how foreign was the
idea of a regular army even to a Government which, certainly for a
time, had been convinced that it was on the eve of war. In March the
Government announced that a first quota of the new regular force would
consist of two infantry battalions and one field artillery unit and would
be authorised in the coming year (1939-40) and that this quota would
total 1,571 men. The formation of further units, it was announced, would
be a subject for later decision by the Government "which would doubtless
be guided by the international situation".4 In August, however, Mr
Menzies,5 who had become Prime Minister in April, announced that the
Government had decided not to raise even this force, which, he pointed
out, would have cost £1,875,000 in the first year. The money would be
spent instead on intensified training of the militia. Mr Menzies said:

It (the Government) feels that, while the national efforts are being properly
directed towards putting Australia into a position to defend itself, regard must
always be had to the inevitable future period of readjustments when the dangers
of war have passed or are sensibly reduced. It is plainly much more practicable
to effect, at some future time, a modification in citizen military training than to
bring about a similar modification of measures which possess a permanent character.6

Thereupon the Military Board was instructed to prepare an alternative
plan and, on 23rd August, the Government announced that it had been

In Australia, in spite of the brevity of the annual training given to the
enthusiastic volunteer militiamen, they were made to undertake complicated
and arduous exercises. It was decided that to spend one camp after
another vainly trying to reach a good standard of individual training was
likely to destroy the keenness of young recruits and was of small value
to the leaders. For example, a coast defence exercise carried out in
October 1938 north of Newcastle, N.S.W., first by the 1st Brigade and
later by the 8th, entailed weeks of careful preliminary staff work and
a fairly high degree of endurance and skill on the part of the units.
The artillery fired over the heads of the infantry with accuracy and an
air force squadron (No. 3) cooperated.

Footnotes

2. This title may confuse overseas readers or Australians of later generations. It was not nationalist in the sense of "separatist", but rather the reverse, nor was it a national-coalition party. Later its name was changed to "United Australia Party", and later still to "Liberal Party".

8. Including twenty-five graduates of the Royal Military College, Duntroon. In addition eight cadets (five of them New Zealanders) withdrew or were discharged in 1921 and four in 1922.

9. Among those who retired from the army soon after the reductions of 1922 were G. F. Wootten and D. A. Whitehead. Later both were outstanding commanders of the Second AIF.

For pages 5-8:

1. Officers who had graduated from the Royal Military College in 1915, for example, and who had become majors in the AIF in 1917 received only the pay of captains in the peace-time army until 1935 when they were in their early forties.

7. The method of collaboration between member States of the British Commonwealth was described as follows in The United Kingdom Central Organisation for Defence (Cmd. 6923)--"Notes on a Comparison with the Australian Machinery ", 14 Nov 1936: "Admittedly the Dominions have a close interest in problems that affect the Commonwealth and Empire as a whole, but each of them has a special and distinct outlook on world affairs, dependent on its geographical position and its political and economic environment, and Dominion Governments must retain full liberty of action. Cooperation in Commonwealth Defence has therefore always taken the practical form of promoting uniformity of organisation, training, and equipment of military forces,
maintaining the closest possible touch between staffs, and inter-changing officers in order to promote a common doctrine and outlook in military affairs. Collaboration in war-time between the naval, land and air forces from different parts of the Commonwealth has thus been easy
and effective. Since 1923, the natural tendency of the different parts of the Commonwealth to view problems from their own individual standpoint has become more marked."

8. Of the four senior defence advisers who accompanied the Australian and New Zealand delegations, three (Vice-Adm A. F. Everett, Rear-Adm P. H. Hall-Thompson and Cmdre A. G. Hotham) were British naval officers on loan to those Dominions; only one, Brig-Gen T. A. Blamey, was an Australian and a soldier.

6. This part of the plan had received a temporary setback in 1924 when the British Government suspended work on the base. It was resumed in 1926. New Zealand contributed to the cost of the base, but Australia did not, arguing that her naval squadron was an adequate contribution to British naval defence.

7. Of the Australian's 27s 2d the navy received 17s 2d, the army 5s 2d, the air force 2s 8d and munitions supply 2s 2d.

8. In 1927, for example, forty-three out of the total of approximately 250 were abroad for all or part of the year.

9. For example, in 1938 lt-cols in the British Army received £1157-1204 a year and a generous pension; in the Australian Staff Corps, £701-779 a year, and inadequate superannuation.

For pages 11-13:

1. It may be significant that it was an Australian-by-adoption who invented Colonel Blimp. Mr David Low though born and educated in New Zealand developed his characteristic style as a young man on the Sydney Bulletin during the war of 1914-18

2. Jerrold, The Lie About the War, 1930. This episode in social history saw a revival of interest not only in "disillusioned "
war books but in war generally, though books such as All Quiet on the Western Front achieved the greater popularity. In the years 1927-30 books about the war which
had for years failed even to find a publisher became best sellers, where earlier books of equal merit and similar aim, such as A. P. Herbert's The Secret Battle and
Frederic Manning's Her Privates We had been comparative failures. The fashion also embraced memoirs of old wars and standard histories such as Creasy and Josephus,
which had not been reprinted for years; and books which do not fall into the group Jerrold criticised--Reitz's Commando and Junger's Storm of Steel for example, written
by soldiers who had no doubts about the justice and necessity of their deeds.

4. The Defence Committee was "an advisory and consultative body... to provide the technical coordinating link between the Naval, Military and Air Boards and the Minister." It consisted of the Chiefs of Staff of each Service and the Secretary of the Department of Defence.

1. It had fallen to the new Government to honour the two senior soldiers of the Commonwealth--Sir Harry Chauvel and Sir John Monash--by promoting each to the full rank of general, a grade not hitherto attained by an officer of the Australian Army. The promotions took effect from 11 Nov (Armistice Day) 1929.

2. In the "citizen forces" of 1929, of 47,564 officers and men, 6,914 had already been volunteers. These comprised all ranks in the cavalry and the officers and a sprinkling of NCOs in the other arms. (The cavalry was raised chiefly in country districts where compulsory training did not apply.)

3. The following tables show the strength of and the expenditure on the armed forces on the eve of the 1914 war, before the reductions of 1922, before the trade depression and at the end of 1938:

5. Others were Col E. F. Harrison and Maj A. W. Hutchin, both former regular officers and graduates of the staff college, and R. G. Casey. The debates on defence in 1931-36 were the best such discussions the Federal Parliament had heard, particularly in the later years when Labour leaders also began to make an intellectual rather than an emotional approach to defence problems.

5. Lord Hankey, GCB, GCMG, GCVO. Sec Committee of Imperial Defence 1912-38 and
Cabinet 1919-38. B. Biarritz, France. 1 Apr 1877. Son of R. A. Hankey of South Aust and Brighton Eng.
(Sir Maurice Hankey visited Australia and the other Dominions in 1934 and discussed rearmament plans
with Ministers and senior officers of the Services. "Every Dominion from the time of my visit expedited
its rearmament", he wrote later.)

7. For Beavis' surveys see D. P. Mellor, The Role of Science and Industry. Soon after the election of Oct 1937, in which Parkhill was defeated, Wynter was recalled to establish and control the new Command and Staff School, and Beavis was brought back to a post at Army HQ, where eventually he was to become Master-General of the Ordnance.

3. For a detailed account of the inquiries and proposals which the Australian delegation carrie dto this conference see P. Hasluck, The Government and the People 1939-41.

4. "Japanese and American Naval Power in the Pacific" by Hector C. Bywater, Pacific Affairs,
June 1935. War in the Pacific by S. Denlmger and C. G. Gary, New York, 1936. A statement
of the same thesis from an Australian point of view, based largely on Wynter, was given in Japan
and the Defence of Australia, by "Albatross" (E. L. Piesse), Melbourne 1935. "Australian Defence Policy"
in The Round Table, Dec 1935, is of equal importance. The most elaborate published study of the problem
was Demand for Defence by W. C. Wentworth, Sydney 1939, in which the author advocated an elaborate defence
plan which was to cost £150,000,000 a year for the first three years. (A copy of a Japanese translation of
this 168-page work was captured on Bougainville in 1944.)

7. Ch 2, Australia's Foreign Policy (edited by W. G. K. Duncan), 1938. In a circular published by the Bank of NSW in Sep 1938 it was estimated that in 1937 the United Kingdom had spent 5 per cent. of the national income on defence, Australia 2 per cent, the United States 1.5 per cent, but Germany 15 per cent.

9. The first appointments to the new commands were: Northern, Maj-Gen H. D. Wynter; Eastern, Maj-Gen V. A. H. Sturdee; Southern, Lt-Gen J. D. Lavarack; Western, Maj-Gen J. M. A. Durrant; 7th Mil District (Darwin Garrison), Lt-Col H. C. H. Robertson. At the same time the Defence Act was amended to embrace the territories of Papua and Norfolk Island. Labour members spoke strongly against this amendment which entailed the extension of the area in which compulsorily-enlisted militiamen were obliged to serve.

For pages 29-32:

1. In November 1938 Mr. Curtin had advocated the creation of a standing army of at least 10,000; such a plan had been canvassed in the press in the previous year.

2. Statement by the Minister for Defence on the first report by Lt-Gen E. K. Squires, 14 Mar 1939, p. 4.

3. True to the traditional English antipathy to regular armies the Australian
Defence Act included a provision to the effect that only artillerymen and certain technical troops
might be enlisted in the permanent military forces. This had produced odd anomalies. For example, when
a contingent was formed to take part in the Coronation ceremonies in London in 1937 the rank and file had
to be enlisted as gunners not infantry; and when in 1938 a Darwin Mobile Force of some 230 men was formed
to provide that new naval station with a little garrison, the men, though most of them were in fact
infantrymen, were enlisted in the Royal Australian Artillery.

4. In Jan 1939 the establishment of the permanent forces totalled 3,572, including 957 instructors, 1,094 artillerymen, and 233 in the Darwin Mobile Force.

7. The Australian system had an advantage over the British in that the highest commands were open to militia officers whereas the Territorial was, in practice, virtually excluded from them; and over the United States in that no political influence was exerted in the promotion and appointment of senior officers and it was therefore impossible for men without sound military experience to obtain commands.

Transcribed and formatted by Szymon Dabrowski for the HyperWar Foundation